English is weird

[TheoK]

OK, there are two alkaline metals called "kalium" and natrium" in Latin. In most languages execpt Romanic languages and English these words are used without "translation". However, in English they are called "potassium" and "sodium". "Potassium" comes from "potash", which is Ka₂CO₃. In Swedish there is a similar word for that specific salt, namely "pottaska". It means the same thing that in English, namely that it comes from ash made in a pot. The same thing goes for "soda"; it's the same word in Swedish and means Ca₂CO₃. This word might come from "seethe"; "sjuda" in Swedish, though it might also derive from Souda Bay in Crete. But fair enough.

The weird thing is that in English the chemists added the Latin suffix -ium to these non-Latin names. That makes them kind of tautologies.

[TheoK]

Once upon a time, when Sweden was brave, the Swedish chemist Berzelius invented these Swedish names for hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen: väte, syre, kväve.

"Väte" comes from "våt"="wet", which has to do with it being a component of water, of course.

"Syre" comes from "syra"="acid" which comes from the contemporary (mis)belief that all acids contain oxygen.

"Kväve" comes from the Swedish verb "kväva"="suffocate", since this was the component of air that was left when the oxygen was removed and nothing could burn.

 

[Todd Bayliss]

It wasn't until well after I had failed Chem 101 three times and college was but a fuzzy memory seen through a haze of beer suds that I realized that the abbreviations for the chemicals were a function of the Latin names used by the entire rest of the world.

And how come "big" is a little word and "little" is a big word?

[Blasted]

American is weirder.  They call aluminium aluminum.

[TheoK]

American is weirder.  They call aluminium aluminum.

Yup. Aluminum even. And they call paracetamol acetaminophen. 

[Adam]

and they cal football soccer 

i was shit at chemistry in school. hated it. worst science
i liked biology and physics was sometimes ok but chemistry. fucking hell

[TheoK]

Chemistry is fun. 

[Blasted]

I didn't like science in secondary school but was miraculously good in it, got full marks for a GCSE modular despite turning up 20mins late for the exam and doing fuck all revision.  Now I really like it though.  Especially astronomy

[Lemon Aguilera]

American is weirder.  They call aluminium aluminum.

isn't it spelled aluminium?

[Todd Bayliss]

American is weirder.  They call aluminium aluminum.

isn't it spelled aluminium?

Not in Alabama it ain't. ButI guess that's what makes life interesting.

Chemistry is just bizarre. Why can't they round numbers like the other scientists. No wonder we keep finding out all these medicines are actually making us sicker. If NASA had used thechemistry method of rounding, Apollo 11 would have wound up on Mercury. I remember taking a chemistry test once right after I came out of physics class. I failed miserably. In going over what went wrong, the teacher discovered I had my calculator still set to track 23 decimal places. That makes you more accurate in physics, but screws you three ways from Sunday in chemical-land.

Call them whatever you want, but football and soccer should never be confused.
Football is rigged.
Soccer is boring.
Don't get them mixed up.

[Phlexor]

And Aussie Rules Football is better than both 

[Adam]

Real foootball is better than all these fake "footballs" elsewhere in the world

Americans find it boring because they're too dumb to get it, and their teams are shit over there

[Parts]

I find most sports boring unless you are participating  especially in TV

[TheoK]

I find most sports boring unless you are participating  especially in TV

 

[TheoK]

And this silent e at the end of words. Sometimes it's there and sometimes it isn't. Like:

morphine but
heroin
codeine but
vicodin

And this fucking hyphen (or not):

horseback
horse-cloth
horsefly
horserace
horse-show
horsewhip
horsetrading

Ridiculous. In Swedish it is:

hästrygg
hästtäcke
hästfluga
hästkapplöpning
hästuppvisning
hästpiska
hästhandel